Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a vehicle occupant protection device and a vehicle occupant protection method for protecting an occupant of a vehicle.
Related Art
Vehicle occupant protection devices have been proposed hitherto that detect collisions of an object with a vehicle, and protect an occupant.
For example, technology is known that regulates the tension of webbing to protect the occupant according to conditions between an occupant's vehicle and an object that is behind the occupant's vehicle (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. H09-132113). In this technology, detection is made by a sensor within a predetermined range behind the occupant's vehicle, and the webbing is taken up to impart belt tension in cases in which the object behind the occupant's vehicle is a vehicle following behind the occupant's vehicle, and the distance between the occupant's vehicle and the vehicle following behind is a predetermined inter-vehicle distance, or less.
However, due to the sensor detecting objects behind the occupant's vehicle only detecting those objects within a predetermined range behind the occupant's vehicle, it is sometimes difficult to detect objects behind the occupant's vehicle lying outside the predetermined range capable of being detected by the sensor. Namely, although a vehicle following behind the occupant's vehicle can be detected as an object behind the occupant's vehicle on a straight road, it is sometimes difficult to detect another vehicle with a weak following relationship as an object behind the occupant's vehicle. For example, in cases in which the traveling direction of the occupant's vehicle and the traveling direction of the other vehicle travelling behind the occupant's vehicle are different from each other, such as on a curved road, there are sometimes cases in which the other vehicle is outside the predetermined range behind the occupant's vehicle and it is difficult to detect the other vehicle as an object behind the occupant's vehicle. Insufficient consideration is therefore given to protecting an occupant from a collision of an object such as another vehicle approaching from outside the detection range of the sensor, specifically, another vehicle approaching obliquely from the rear of the occupant's vehicle.
In consideration of the above circumstances, the present disclosure provides a vehicle occupant protection device and a vehicle occupant protection method capable of improving occupant protection performance with respect to an oblique collision from the rear of a vehicle, using a simple configuration.